“Bill,” she said after a while.
“Yes?” I said.
“Nothing.” She tugged at a blade of grass.
I couldn’t figure that one out. But her hand strayed somewhere near mine. Our fingertips touched, and clung.
We were silent for a long time. Never had I been so happy.
“Bill?”
“Yes?”
“Bill dear, could you ever—”
What she was going to say, and what I might have answered, I will never know. At that moment our silence was shattered by the roar of jets. Down from the sky dropped a spaceship.
Ed Wallace, the pilot, was a white-haired old man in a slouch hat and a stained trench coat. He was a salesman for Clear-Flo, an outfit that cleansed water on a planetary basis. Since I had no need for his services, he thanked me, and left.
But he didn’t get very far. His engines turned over once, and stopped with a frightening finality.
I looked over his drive mechanism, and found that a sphinx valve had blown. It would take me a month to make him a new one with hand tools.
“This is terribly awkward,” he murmured. “I suppose I’ll have to stay here.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
He looked at his ship regretfully. “Can’t understand how it happened,” he said.
“Maybe you weakened the valve when you cut it with a hacksaw,” I said, and walked off. I had seen the telltale marks.
Mr. Wallace pretended not to hear me. That evening I overheard his report on the interstellar radio, which functioned perfectly. His home office, interestingly enough, was not Clear-Flo, but Central Intelligence.
Mr. Wallace made a good vegetable farmer, even though he spent most of his time sneaking around with camera and notebook. His presence spurred Young Roy to greater efforts. Mavis and I stopped walking in the gloomy forest, and there didn’t seem time to return to the yellow and green fields, to finish some unfinished sentences.
But our little settlement prospered. We had other visitors. A man and his wife from Regional Intelligence dropped by, posing as itinerant fruit pickers. They were followed by two girl photographers, secret representatives of the Executive Information Bureau, and then there was a young newspaper man, who was actually from the Idaho Council of Spatial Morals.
Every single one of them blew a sphinx valve when it came time to leave.
I didn’t know whether to feel proud or ashamed. A half-dozen agents were watching me—but every one of them was a second rater. And invariably, after a few weeks on my planet, they became involved in farm work and their Spying efforts dwindled to nothing.
I had bitter moments. I pictured myself as a testing ground for novices, something to cut their teeth on. I was the Suspect they gave to Spies who were too old or too young, inefficient, scatterbrained, or just plain incompetent. I saw myself as a sort of half-pay retirement plan Suspect, a substitute for a pension.
But it didn’t bother me too much. I did have a position, although it was a little difficult to define. I was happier than I had ever been on Earth, and my Spies were pleasant and cooperative people.
Our little colony was happy and secure.
I thought it could go on forever.
Then, one fateful night, there was unusual activity. Some important message seemed to be coming in, and all radios were on. I had to ask a few Spies to share sets, to keep from burning out my generator.
Finally all radios were turned off, and the Spies held conferences. I heard them whispering into the small hours. The next morning, they were all assembled in the living room, and their faces were long and somber. Mavis stepped forward as spokeswoman.
“Something terrible has happened,” she said to me. “But first, we have something to reveal to you. Bill, none of us are what we seem. We are all Spies for the government.”
“Huh?” I said, not wanting to hurt any feelings.
“It’s true,” she said. “We’ve been Spying on you, Bill.”
“Huh?” I said again. “Even you?”
“Even me,” Mavis said unhappily.
“And now it’s all over,” Young Roy blurted out.
That shook me. “Why?” I asked.
They looked at each other. Finally Mr. Wallace, bending the rim of his hat back and forth in his callused hands, said, “Bill, a resurvey has just shown that this sector of space is not owned by the United States.”
“What country does own it?”
“Be calm,” Mavis said. “Try to understand. This entire sector was overlooked in the international survey, and now it can’t be claimed by any country. As the first to settle here, this planet, and several million miles of space surrounding it, belong to you, Bill.”
I was too stunned to speak.
“Under the circumstances,” Mavis continued, “we have no authorization to be here. So we’re leaving immediately.”
“But you can’t!” I cried. “I haven’t repaired your sphinx valves!”
“All Spies carry spare sphinx valves and hacksaw blades,” she said gently.
Watching them troop out to their ships, I pictured the solitude ahead of me. I would have no government to watch over me. No longer would I hear footsteps in the night, turn, and see the dedicated face of a Spy behind me. No longer would the whir of an old camera soothe me at work, nor the buzz of a defective recorder lull me to sleep.
And yet, I felt even sorrier for them. Those poor, earnest, clumsy, bungling Spies were returning to a fast, efficient, competitive world. Where would they find another Suspect like me, or another place like my planet?
“Goodbye, Bill,” Mavis said, offering me her hand.
I watched her walk to Mr. Wallace’s ship. It was only then that I realized that she was no longer my Spy.
“Mavis!” I cried, running after her. She hurried toward the ship. I caught her by the arm. “Wait There was something I started to say in the ship. I wanted to say it again on the picnic.”
She tried to pull away from me. In most unromantic tones I croaked, “Mavis, I love you.”
She was in my arms. We kissed, and I told her that her home was here, on this planet with its gloomy forests and yellow and green fields. Here with me.
She was too happy to speak.
With Mavis staying, Young Roy reconsidered. Mr. Wallace’s vegetables were just ripening, and he wanted to tend them. And everyone else had some chore or other that he couldn’t drop.
So here I am—ruler, king, dictator, president, whatever I want to call myself. Spies are beginning to pour in now from every country—not only America.
To feed all my subjects, I’ll soon have to import food. But the other rulers are beginning to refuse me aid. They think I’ve bribed their Spies to desert.
I haven’t, I swear it. They just come.
I can’t resign, because I own this place. And I haven’t the heart to send them away. I’m at the end of my rope.
With my entire population consisting of former government Spies, you’d think I’d have an easy time forming a government of my own. But no, they’re completely uncooperative. I’m the absolute ruler of a planet of farmers, dairymen, shepherds, and cattle raisers, so I guess we won’t starve after all. But that’s not the point. The point is: how in hell am I supposed to rule?
Not a single one of these people will Spy for me.
Ask a Foolish Question
Answerer was built to last as long as was necessary—which was quite long, as some races judge time, and not long at all, according to others. But to Answerer, it was just long enough.
As to size, Answerer was large to some and small to others. He could be viewed as complex, although some believed that he was really very simple.
Answerer knew that he was as he should be. Above and beyond all else, he was The Answerer. He Knew.
Of the race that built him, the less said the better. They also Knew, and never said whether they found the knowledge pleasant.
They built Answerer as a service to less-sophisticate
d races, and departed in a unique manner. Where they went only Answerer knows.
Because Answerer knows everything.
Upon his planet, circling his sun, Answerer sat. Duration continued, long, as some judge duration, short as others judge it. But as it should be, to Answerer.
Within him were the Answers. He knew the nature of things, and why things are as they are, and what they are, and what it all means.
Answerer could answer anything, provided it was a legitimate question. And he wanted to! He was eager to!
How else should an Answerer be?
What else should an Answerer do?
So he waited for creatures to come and ask.
“How do you feel, sir?” Morran asked, floating gently over to the old man.
“Better,” Lingman said, trying to smile. No-weight was a vast relief. Even though Morran had expended an enormous amount of fuel, getting into space under minimum acceleration, Lingman’s feeble heart hadn’t liked it. Lingman’s heart had balked and sulked, pounded angrily against the brittle rib-case, hesitated and sped up. It seemed for a time as though Lingman’s heart was going to stop, out of sheer pique.
But no-weight was a vast relief, and the feeble heart was going again.
Morran had no such problems. His strong body was built for strain and stress. He wouldn’t experience them on this trip, not if he expected old Lingman to live.
“I’m going to live,” Lingman muttered, in answer to the unspoken question. “Long enough to find out.” Morran touched the controls, and the ship slipped into sub-space like an eel into oil.
“We’ll find out,” Morran murmured. He helped the old man unstrap himself. “We’re going to find the Answerer!”
Lingman nodded at his young partner. They had been reassuring themselves for years. Originally it had been Lingman’s project. Then Morran, graduating from Cal Tech, had joined him. Together they had traced the rumors across the solar system. The legends of an ancient humanoid race who had known the answer to all things, and who had built Answerer and departed.
“Think of it,” Morran said. “The answer to everything!” A physicist, Morran had many questions to ask Answerer. The expanding universe; the binding force of atomic nuclei; novae and super- novae; planetary formation; red shift, relativity and a thousand others.
“Yes,” Lingman said. He pulled himself to the vision plate and looked out on the bleak prairie of the illusory sub-space. He was a biologist and an old man. He had two questions.
What is life?
What is death?
After a particularly long period of hunting purple, Lek and his friends gathered to talk. Purple always ran thin in the neighborhood of multiple-cluster stars—why, no one knew so talk was definitely in order.
“Do you know,” Lek said, “I think I’ll hunt up this Answerer.” Lek spoke the Ollgrat language now, the language of imminent decision.
“Why?” Ilm asked him, in the Hvest tongue of light banter. “Why do you want to know things? Isn’t the job of gathering purple enough for you?”
“No,” Lek said, still speaking the language of imminent decision. “It is not.” The great job of Lek and his kind was the gathering of purple. They found purple imbedded in many parts of the fabric of space, minute quantities of it. Slowly, they were building a huge mound of it. What the mound was for, no one knew.
“I suppose you’ll ask him what purple is?” Ilm asked, pushing a star out of his way and lying down.
“I will,” Lek said. “We have continued in ignorance too long. We must know the true nature of purple, and its meaning in the scheme of things. We must know why it governs our lives.” For this speech Lek switched to Ilgret, the language of incipent-knowledge.
Ilm and the others didn’t try to argue, even in the tongue of arguments. They knew that the knowledge was important. Ever since the dawn of time, Lek, Ilm, and the others had gathered purple. Now it was time to know the ultimate answers to the universe—what purple was, and what the mound was for.
And of course, there was the Answerer to tell them. Everyone had heard of the Answerer, built by a race not unlike themselves, now long departed.
“Will you ask him anything else?” Ilm asked Lek.
“I don’t know,” Lek said. “Perhaps I’ll ask about the stars. There’s really nothing else important.” Since Lek and his brothers had lived since the dawn of time, they didn’t consider death. And since their numbers were always the same, they didn’t consider the question of life.
But purple? And the mound?
“I go!” Lek shouted, in the vernacular of decision-to-fact.
“Good fortune!” his brothers shouted back, in the jargon of greatest friendship.
Lek strode off, leaping from star to star.
Alone on his little planet, Answerer sat, waiting for the Questioners. Occasionally he mumbled the answers to himself. This was his privilege. He Knew.
But he waited, and the time was neither too long nor too short, for any of the creatures of space to come and ask.
There were eighteen of them, gathered in one place.
“I invoke the rule of eighteen,” cried one. And another appeared, who had never before been, born by the rule of eighteen.
“We must go to the Answerer,” one cried. “Our lives are governed by the rule of eighteen. Where there are eighteen, there will be nineteen. Why is this so?”
No one could answer.
“Where am I?” asked the newborn nineteenth. One took him aside for instruction.
That left seventeen. A stable number.
“And we must find out,” cried another, “why all places are different, although there is no distance.”
That was the problem. One is here. Then one is there. Just like that, no movement, no reason. And yet, without moving, one is in another place.
“The stars are cold,” one cried.
“Why?”
“We must go to the Answerer.”
For they had heard the legends, knew the tales. “Once there was a race, a good deal like us, and they Knew—and they told Answerer. Then they departed to where there is no place, but much distance.”
“How do we get there?” the newborn nineteenth cried, filled now with knowledge.
“We go.” And eighteen of them vanished. One was left. Moodily he stared at the tremendous spread of an icy star, then he too vanished.
“Those old legends are true,” Morran gasped. “There it is.”
They had come out of sub-space at the place the legends told of, and before them was a star unlike any other star. Morran invented a classification for it, but it didn’t matter. There was no other like it.
Swinging around the star was a planet, and this too was unlike any other planet. Morran invented reasons, but they didn’t matter. This planet was the only one.
“Strap yourself in, sir,” Morran said. “I’ll land as gently as I can.”
Lek came to Answerer, striding swiftly from star to star. He lifted Answerer in his hand and looked at him.
“So you are Answerer,” he said.
“Yes,” Answerer said.
“Then tell me,” Lek said, settling himself comfortably in a gap between the stars, “tell me what I am.”
“A partiality,” Answerer said. “An indication.”
“Come now,” Lek muttered, his pride hurt. “You can do better than that. Now then. The purpose of my kind is to gather purple, and to build a mound of it. Can you tell me the real meaning of this?”
“Your question is without meaning,” Answerer said. He knew what purple actually was, and what the mound was for. But the explanation was concealed in a greater explanation. Without this, Lek’s question was inexplicable, and Lek had failed to ask the real question.
Lek asked other questions, and Answerer was unable to answer them. Lek viewed things through his specialized eyes, extracted a part of the truth and refused to see more. How to tell a blind man the sensation of green?
Answerer didn’t try. He w
asn’t supposed to.
Finally, Lek emitted a scornful laugh. One of his little stepping- stones flared at the sound, then faded back to its usual intensity.
Lek departed, striding swiftly across the stars.
Answerer knew. But he had to be asked the proper questions first. He pondered this limitation, gazing at the stars which were neither large nor small, but exactly the right size.
The proper questions. The race which built Answerer should have taken that into account, Answerer thought. They should have made some allowance for semantic nonsense, allowed him to attempt an unravelling.
Answerer contented himself with muttering the answers to himself.
Eighteen creatures came to Answerer, neither walking nor flying, but simply appearing. Shivering in the cold glare of the stars, they gazed up at the massiveness of Answerer.
“If there is no distance,” one asked, “then how can things be in other places?”
Answerer knew what distance was, and what places were. But he couldn’t answer the question. There was distance, but not as these creatures saw it. And there were places, but in a different fashion from that which the creatures expected.
“Rephrase the question,” Answerer said hopefully.
“Why are we short here,” one asked. “And long over there? Why are we fat over there, and short here? Why are the stars cold?”
Answerer knew all things. He knew why stars are cold, but he couldn’t explain it in terms of stars or coldness.
“Why,” another asked, “is there a rule of eighteen? Why, when eighteen gather, is another produced?”
But of course the answer was part of another, greater question, which hadn’t been asked.
Another was produced by the rule of eighteen, and the nineteen creatures vanished.
Answerer mumbled the right questions to himself, and answered them.
“We made it,” Morran said. “Well, well.” He patted Lingman on the shoulder—lightly, because Lingman might fall apart.
The old biologist was tired. His face was sunken, yellow, lined. Already the mark of the skull was showing in his prominent yellow teeth, his small, flat nose, his exposed cheekbones. The matrix was showing through.
Citizen in Space Page 21
